A Word or Two on Blogging

Not sure how this all began - I do know that Sue started reading blogs before on of our trips to France, maybe 2009. Many of you read "Living the Life in Saint Aignan" and "WCS - Another American in France".
We'd been reading these blogs prior to the trip and made contact with Ken and Walt. I think maybe this was when we first started blogging.
A friend helped me set it up using both Blogger and Word Press. I found Blogger the more friendly of the two but also the most frustrating at times.
As we blogged our way through France on that trip, our intention was to keep family and friends informed. Several became followers and comments occasionally would flow.
Later we started to discover further interesting blogs to read, many recommended by serial blog reader, Nadege from the west coast of the US.
On our return to Melbourne we renamed our Blog to "Melbourne - Our Home on the Bay". We started to become tourists in our own town. Sue's passion for cooking added depth to the posts which was littered with the odd story on a weekend away, house renovations and of course my occasional cycling adventure.

http://frenchtravelswithmywife.blogspot.com/
Some unashamedly self promotion - come and say hello.

A while back came "Travelling through France" which has developed into a diary of travel memoirs. Only this year - January 1 in fact, I set a task to post one photograph for every day of 2012. I was inspired by a South Australia Blogger, Dianne who has recently ran out of photos for her Blog, "All Things French". You can enjoy her other Blog though - "Adelaide and Beyond".

A few weeks ago, out of the blue, we received an award for "Melbourne - Our Home on the Bay" from fellow Blogger Jean of  "A Very Grand Pressigny". Its proudly displayed on our side bar. The Liebster Blog award requires us to select another five blogs with less than 200 followers that we enjoy reading. I can see that I need to increase my blog reading as the ones I wished to pass on the award have already received it or are so popular that they have more than 200 followers.

So here are my selections for the Liebster Blog award.
1. First there is the bloke who set up our first blog, Leaping Leon's French Fancies before it became Melbourne Our Home on the Bay.
Eger Eyes posts a sometimes daily photo - he's really a bit slack but by offering this award he might just renew some enthusiasm with some comments from my fellow bloggers.

This is Eger Eye's Man Cave.

http://egereyes.wordpress.com/

2. I mentioned Dianne of Adelaide and Beyond being an inspiration of my New Year resolution to post 365 photos of France for 2012. For this and her great photos on her blog, she gets my second award. When I last looked she had 199 followers but only this morning when I looked again, she had 202 - I'll ignore this because I decided she was on my list earlier.

http://adelaideaz.blogspot.com/

And while you're at it - check out her popular "All Things French". 400 plus followers, how popular is that. Currently its in recess until her next trip to France.

http://www.frenchaz.blogspot.com/

Most of the blogs I read are well over the 200 followers so now it becomes difficult. How do they become so popular, I have to say on most days after getting home from work the first thing I do is check emails and Blogs.

3. Eminence Rouge is about the Loire town of Richelieu, a place we have visited a few times now. Cardinal Richelieu had the town built on his own plans - we've blogged our visits there in the past.

http://richelieu-eminencerouge.blogspot.com/

4. Jim McNeill's blog, a Social History in the Touraine is only a recent addition to our sidebar but a most interesting Blog. I keep going back to it through his past posts just to increase my general knowledge of this wonderful region of France.

http://jimmcneill.wordpress.com/

5. Another recent blog addition to the side bar is Sir Lord Thomas, a very quirky Blog on sixties music and lifestyle. Some of the music posts are quite obscure to say the least.

http://sirlordthomas.blogspot.com/

So that's my five selections for the Liebster Blog award - if you haven't already caught up with these blogs, then off ya pop and have a bit of a gander. Till next post, toodle pip.